Air Power: The Making of a Modern Wind Turbine and Wind Farm [Slide Show]
The amount of electricity produced from the wind continues to grow at a rapid clip, meaning more and more wind turbines dot the landscape
Air Power: The Making of a Modern Wind Turbine and Wind Farm [Slide Show]
- HURLING ICE Although electricity from wind turbines can cut down on carbon dioxide emissions and other pollution, some people have found flaws—their noise (a constant hum when the wind blows), their propensity to kill birds or bats when improperly sited, and their ability to fling chunks of ice, as pictured here... © Kathryn McCullough
- WIND FARM To match the output of traditional power plants, hundreds of wind turbines are usually installed in one favorable location, such as the Klondike wind farm in Oregon pictured here. Even though the turbines sprawl to cover hectares of land, more traditional uses of the land—such as actual farming—can continue around them... Courtesy of GE
- GRID CONNECTION Each individual turbine generator is connected to a local grid that then feeds into the broader regional grid, which relays the electricity to consumers. One of the challenges of wind power is that the wind often blows best far away from where the most electricity is used—in densely populated metropolitan areas such as New York City and Los Angeles... Courtesy of AWEA
- GENERATOR All that spinning sets magnets in motion, generating an electrical field—just as steam sets a turbine spinning to turn magnets in a coal-fired or nuclear power plant. A typical, two-megawatt wind turbine today can generate more than 6,000 megawatt-hours of electricity a year from an induction generator that produces alternating current... Courtesy of Vestas
- SPIN DOCTORING The three spinning blades are connected to a shaft, which turns with the breeze. That's not nearly fast enough to generate electricity with a regular generator, so in most wind turbines a gearbox uses that spin to turn secondary gears fast enough to twirl magnets in the generator... Courtesy of NREL